Many modern wireless communication devices (e.g., cell phones, wireless sensors, PDAs, RFID readers, etc.) utilize transceivers having both a transmitter section configured to transmit data and a receiver section configured to receive data over radio frequencies.
For example, FIG. 1 illustrates a wireless communication transceiver 100 comprising a transmission path 102 and a reception path 104. To achieve high data rates, transceiver 100 may be configured to operate in full-duplex mode, wherein both transmission path 102 and reception path 104 operate at the same time. During full-duplex mode operation, transmission path 102 typically uses one carrier frequency while reception path 104 uses another carrier frequency (e.g., an adjacent frequency band). In order to provide isolation between transmission path 102 and reception path 104, a duplexer 106 may couple both transmission path 102 and reception path 104 to a common antenna 108.
Despite using different frequencies, intermodulation distortion may arise during operation of transceiver 100. One of the most common sources of intermodulation distortion occurs when a transmitted signal 110 leaks into reception path 104 due to limited isolation between transmission path 102 and reception path 104. Once intermodulation distortion appears within reception path 104, there is no way of distinguishing it from the desired signal and transceiver sensitivity is degraded.